


You Get What You Need

by Linpatootie



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, M/M, Substance Abuse, Unrequited Love, just really fucking tragic all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 05:38:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linpatootie/pseuds/Linpatootie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock meets up with an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Get What You Need

**Author's Note:**

> Victor Trevor is a character featured in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Gloria Scott. The title refers to a 1969 Rolling Stones song - you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.

Sherlock has a small scar on his ankle. It’s nothing, a vague indentation on his skin, faded so much that you might only see it when you get real close (and let’s face it, how many people does Sherlock Holmes allow _that_ close to him?). But Sherlock knows that it’s there and cherishes it, in an odd sort of way, an old hurt which reveals the follies of Sherlock’s youth, the way a sailor’s tattoo tells stories of braving storms and exploring foreign land.

Victor Trevor was a bit like braving a storm and exploring foreign land, too. He whirled into Sherlock’s life and whirled out again and it’s only fitting that that impact, so very formative, branded itself into Sherlock’s bony ankle to remain for the rest of his life. 

///

_The dog, a wiry-haired Jack Russel Terrier that appears to imagine itself some kind of Irish Wolf hound, snarls and grabs him by the ankle. Sherlock yells and flails but the damn thing is tenacious as fuck and only bites down harder. He swings one trainer-clad foot and hits it against its compact little flank. It lets go, yelps, barks, rolls over and bares tiny teeth at him as Sherlock touches his fingers to his enthusiastically bleeding ankle._

_“Boston!” There’s a boy, then, something of an apparition, tall and skinny with blond curly hair in desperate need of cutting. He runs up and without so much as hesitating punches Sherlock in the head. “Don’t you fucking dare kick my dog!”_

_“The bastard bit me!”  
“I don’t give a shit. Don’t you fucking _ dare _kick my dog.”_

_The boy with the dark curls and the boy with the light curls stand and stare and something in the universe rearranges itself._

///

John folds his shirts with military precision, swift movements of well-taught hands producing disturbingly neat little cotton rectangles. Sherlock observes him for a moment, standing in the door to John’s room, brain working a mile a minute to file everything away this tells him about John.

“I’m going out tonight,” he drawls then. John turns, t-shirt in hand, his face relaxed and posture at ease. This is meditative for him, somehow, the small bit of chores. Fascinating. “Don’t wait up.”  
“Where are you going?” Interest, not some overprotective need to track Sherlock’s every move.

“I have a date.”  
“No, seriously.”  
“Yes, seriously, John. I have a date.”

The t-shirt is folded and put aside and John just looks at him for a perplexed couple of seconds, hands held in front of his stomach. “All right. Good on you, then,” he finally comes out with. “Dare I ask with whom?”  
“Old uni friend whom I haven’t seen in twelve years. We’re going to dinner to catch up.”  
“Does this uni friend have a name?”  
“Victor. Victor Trevor.”  
“Ah. I see. A bloke. That’s, that’s good to know.”  
“You said it was all fine.”  
“Of course it is, don’t be daft.”

It’s not fine, not necessarily, but John doesn’t need to know that.

“So you’ll be home late?”  
“Probably. Possibly not until tomorrow.”  
John says nothing, then smiles and turns back to his laundry. Sherlock stands in the door and watches him, for just a short while longer, then quietly slinks down the stairs.

///

_Victor Trevor is gorgeous, and clever, and comes with a delightful rebellious streak. Absolutely filthy rich and bored to tears, he is instantly intrigued by the all-encompassing hatred of the world that hangs around the seventeen year old Sherlock Holmes like a particularly self-destructive cloud._

_Sherlock’s ankle needs six stitches. Victor’s mother apologises to Sherlock’s mother for the biting and the punching and Sherlock’s mother apologises to Victor’s mother for, well,_ Sherlock _, and the two boys come to an oddly unspoken kind of understanding. Victor bums a cig off of Sherlock and that, as they say, is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  
More or less. _

_At first it is simply shared smokes on a bench in the park, watching Boston terrorise unsuspecting nannies hoarding about fat wealthy children. Sherlock finds Victor quite capable of holding his own in a discussion and thoroughly pleased by Sherlock’s habit of criticising damn near everything about people, and Victor learns the only thing sharper than Sherlock’s tongue to be his intelligence and is instantly besotted._

_They first kiss in the drawing room in Victor’s father’s estate, where they were drinking Victor’s father’s insanely expensive whiskey as if it were lemonade. Victor falls over him, pawing at his shirt, and Sherlock just falls back and lets it happen to him. A hot, wet mouth moves over his and he absolutely fails to categorise it. Pleasurable? Revolting?_

_He eventually settles on ‘fascinating’ and ‘new’ and those two things are usually enough to draw him into something. He opens his mouth and lets Victor explore it with his tongue. Even though it edges closer to ‘revolting’ than ‘pleasurable’ it makes his skin tingle anyway, creates a heated sort of drone between his ears, and for the first time in seventeen years Sherlock’s brain shuts off and he just_ feels _._

_Victor stuffs a hand down the front of Sherlock’s jeans and pulls on his surprisingly hard cock and Sherlock ejaculates almost instantly, going quite rigid with shock. Victor laughs into his mouth.  
“Virgin,” he accuses.  
“As are you,” Sherlock counters, sitting up and gathering what remains of his dignity.  
“True. But at least I don’t come like a bottle rocket if someone as much as looks at my cock.”_

_So Sherlock pounces him and proves him delightfully, messily wrong._

///

Sherlock hasn’t actually been on a date in his entire life. He has no idea what to do, but keeps reminding himself that, really, it’s just Victor, it’s just dinner, it’s just catching up, but he’s a clever man and knows that it’s not. It’s digging up a relic from his past that might be better off left buried. 

He also knows that if Mycroft knew what he was going to do tonight he’d make sure he was tied up enough to have to cancel. Literally, if he had to – Mycroft wouldn’t be above _actually_ getting out a bit of rope and securing him to a chair. 

He stands in front of the mirror, tugging on the lapels of his jacket, and wonders why he cares. It’s Victor, after all, who has seen him at his worst. He could show up in his pyjamas and still look a sight better than he did when they last saw each other.

John switches the radio on in the kitchen. Doing the washing up, then, humming along, and he’s so very present in the flat and in Sherlock’s life that it’s almost tangible. He can picture him, dish towel slung over his shoulder, foot tapping along to the beat, and Sherlock feels indescribably torn. It’s as if he is two people – one who wants to go see Victor, catch up, have him do indecent things to him in the backseat of a cab. The other wants to stay here and pick apart John’s little habits and quirks that keep surprising him. Victor’s Sherlock, John’s Sherlock, and he gets dizzy trying to reconcile the two. 

He buttons the top button of his shirt, he unbuttons the top button of his shirt, and suddenly craves a cigarette.

///

_Sherlock has been seeing Victor for almost seven months when Mycroft visits and meets him, catches them in the back garden, hanging boneless in mother’s gazebo. They shared a more than meaningful gaze and Victor had ambled off with a dismissive flick of his hand._

_“Who is that boy?” Mycroft asks, distastefully eyeing the collection of cigarette buds by Sherlock’s feet, and Sherlock already hates this conversation.  
“Victor.”  
“Yes, and who is Victor?” Just the way in which he spits out Victor’s name, like he’s some kind of insect found scrabbling about in the back of a rarely cleaned kitchen cabinet, makes Sherlock want to punch his brother in his flabby gut.  
“Friend.”  
“You don’t have friends.”  
“I have a Victor.” He smirks. Mycroft twitches, and Sherlock feels triumphant._

_“You’re having sex with this boy.” It’s not a question.  
“None of your fucking business.”  
“Language, Sherlock, for God’s sake.”_

_Sherlock rolls his eyes and rolls off the bench he’d been slumped across. “I like him. Back off,” is all he offers his brother as he, too, leaves, in a saunter all too reminiscent of the one Victor had blessed the world with only minutes earlier, narrow hips swaying to prove just how little he cares._

_“We talked about the smoking, Sherlock,” Mycroft tries to throw after him, but Sherlock isn’t even going to_ dignify _that with a response._

///

He picks Victor up at his hotel, going up five floors in a spacious lift. The corridors are wide and quiet, cream-coloured carpet and silver sconces on the walls. There’s an enormous bouquet of fresh flowers at the end of the hall, on a triangular little table, and the whole floor smells sickeningly of orchids. Victor shouldn’t be here, he should be in his family’s home, one of the many places with his father’s name on the walls, but he supposes it’s pride that’s put him here. For a fleeting moment Sherlock wonders if John has ever been in a hotel like this one and whether he would like to sometime, but he pushes the thought away. There’s no need for John to stay in any hotels, and this sort of luxury would make him uncomfortable. He’s seen the inside of his bedroom. John is all military, bare-bones and basic necessities. He’d have no idea what to do here, would feel out of place and miserable and _common_ and everything Sherlock knows he isn’t but John still fears he is anyway.

John would hate this place, so for a very intense, vivid moment Sherlock hates it too.

He’s barely through the door into Victor’s room and he’s already kissing him. It’s been really very long since Sherlock has kissed anyone at all so he lets him, just focused on the sensory side of the thing, expensive aftershave on Victor’s skin and the taste of tobacco on his tongue. It sets all sort of cravings alight in Sherlock’s brain that he doesn’t really know what to do with all at once. 

Victor pulls back, slender hands on his waist, and smiles a brilliant, white-toothed smile. “Hi Sherlock,” he says affectionately and there’s something so smitten in his blue eyes it makes Sherlock’s skin crawl.  
“Hi Victor,” he says softly. He doesn’t return the smile, but knows Victor doesn’t expect him to. Instead he leans back in, drawing Victor’s mouth into another kiss, simply reminding himself how it _feels_ again, another person, so close. He wonders what Victor would say if he told him how long it’s been since he kissed anyone, but then, Victor probably knows. Victor always knows. 

They stand in the open door for a good ten minutes, kissing until Sherlock’s lips start to feel numb, Victor pressing an unsurprising erection against Sherlock’s hipbone in lazy, shallow thrusts.  
“We’ll be late for our reservation,” Sherlock says against the corner of Victor’s mouth.  
“We could just skip dinner.”  
“I’d rather not.”  
“All right.” 

Victor lets him go, adjusts himself in his trousers and grabs his jacket. He looks good – of course he looks good. Healthy. His clothes are pristine and his hair bounces around his head in clean, neatly styled curls. He smiles again – he bleaches his teeth, Sherlock notes. There’s an expensive titanium ring on his right middle finger and an even more expensive titanium watch around his left wrist. He’s all luxury, the practised ease of old money Sherlock often catches on himself, too. 

They kiss again in the cab, the cabbie eyeing them in his rear-view mirror. Victor places a hand demonstratively on Sherlock’s crotch, sucking on Sherlock’s bottom lip, and an old, familiar thrill sparks under Sherlock’s breastbone. This. This is Victor, he thinks, this is what he always was and Sherlock _has_ missed it. Then Victor laughs and it’s a breathless, sardonic sound and Sherlock thinks with a fierceness that surprises himself that it’s not the _right_ sound and the thrill is gone. He sits back and removes Victor’s hand from his groin, raising an eyebrow at him, and Victor just laughs again, entangling his fingers with Sherlock’s.

Victor tips the cabbie an insane amount. Sherlock wonders if the cabbie understands that he was simply a part of this game of theirs and watches as the cab blends back into London. 

///

 _Sherlock lives to gather data, useful facts, stored and kept and whipped out when necessary. It follows somewhat logically to him that sex is nothing more than just that – a means of gathering information, cataloguing and categorising basic biological responses. Victor is all hands and Sherlock monitors every reaction carefully, for as long as he can manage, until Victor does something that makes his train of thought derail completely into a blinding white blizzard of physical sensation and, oh, right. It’s sloppy and awkward and above all dreadfully inefficient and Sherlock isn’t sure he_ likes _it. Not in the way Victor does, at least, asking Sherlock for it every opportunity he gets, following him around with insistent desire slathered across his face._

_He still lets him, of course, for so many reasons. He lists them in his head, wondering if it’s a bad thing that ‘sexual desire’ doesn’t appear on the list at all. He asks Victor who gives him an odd look and sets out to give him a most elaborate kind of blowjob in what Sherlock takes to be an attempt to prove that Sherlock wants him after all (and he’s not wrong, not_ technically _, since that persistent mouth on his cock isn’t quite what Sherlock would refer to as ‘undesirable’, it’s merely that he doesn’t spend every waking minute rigid with single-minded anticipation of the next time he gets to feel it. It’s something he can’t define for himself, not yet at this point)._

_It’s all new, and surprising every corner they take, and there’s a delightful kind of taboo piled on top of the thing. He knows Mycroft would disapprove in so many different ways and that alone is, generally speaking, a reason for Sherlock to stick to a certain pastime (to be fair, the only reason he picked up smoking as well was simply because Mycroft had forbidden him to). Victor is_ dangerous _, Victor is_ adventure _, and Sherlock gets addicted to the adrenaline rush he quite consistently supplies him with._

_And then, Victor reinvents the word ‘addiction’._

_It starts, quite pedestrian, with marijuana. First year in college, not even sharing a dorm but rarely apart anyway. Victor likes it, but Sherlock does not. It makes him feel slow, his limbs heavy, and it frustrates him that Victor gets slow on the stuff too, lazy and barely able to have a decent discussion. They try it twice and then Sherlock flushes the stuff down the toilet. Victor doesn’t even care – he’s got money for more, if he’d wanted to, and it displeases him he wasn’t able to make Sherlock happy with this._

_So he tries again. Uppers then, he says, not downers, and he gives Sherlock tiny little pills with a crudely stamped out triangle on them. Sherlock’s entire body feels like it’s on fire and his mind even more so, like he’s somehow taller than he is, and Victor is the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. This he likes, this he likes a lot, and he babbles at Victor about wanting to go out, somewhere, anywhere, but Victor tackles him onto his bed and has him out of his clothes in no time._

_Sherlock just laughs at the whole thing, throughout the whole thing, even when Victor does things to him he’s never done before and is pushing eager fingers inside of him and then his cock and Sherlock just kisses him, kisses him like they’re stranded in the desert and Victor is an oasis, cool and fresh and probably not real. Sherlock can’t climax, can’t get himself hard, but Victor cries out and comes and whispers in his ear until they both fall asleep._

_In the morning Victor cries and Sherlock can’t figure out why. They do it all over again two nights later._

///

Victor picked the restaurant and it’s such a blatant show of status that Sherlock almost walks away from it. They get a table by the window and their own personal waiter, who supplies them with some impressive sort of wine Victor selects as well. It’s astonishing how little Sherlock actually cares about all of this, and Victor knows it too. It’s probably why he chose this place at all, to annoy him just a little bit. I still know how you work, it says, I still know how to get you worked up.

“I’m surprised you agreed to come tonight. Pleasantly so, mind,” Victor says after they have exchanged the necessary if not frightfully dull stories of how-are-you-these-days. They know how they are, there’s no need, really, but they fell into them somehow anyway.  
“I have no reason not to,” Sherlock says, fingertips sliding around the foot of his wine glass.  
Victor chuckles, following Sherlock’s fingers with his eyes. “I can think of one big fat reason.” Sherlock half-grins at him.

“Did you know your brother visited me, once? He threatened me to stay away from you.”  
“That doesn’t surprise me.”  
“How is dear Mycroft, anyway? What does he do these days?”  
“Meddlesome as ever. He works for the government.”  
“Now _that_ doesn’t surprise _me_.”

Victor orders for the both of them and the waiter brings them their food, small pieces of fish artfully posed on long, oval plates. John would think that funny, would quip about requiring directions to find his way across the porcelain to his food. Sherlock fights the urge to fish his phone out his pocket and text him.

“Are you enjoying not living on your own?” Victor asks. There it is, then. Sherlock had been waiting for him to bring up John, and is surprised he had the self-control to keep himself from it for this long.  
“Yes, actually,” he says, picking up the silver cutlery. The corner of Victor’s mouth curls up – amused, perhaps even endeared, in his own odd little way.

“I read his blog, you know.”  
“What do you think?”  
“Oh, very nice. Good to see I’m not the only person to ever fall stupidly in love with you.”  
Sherlock says nothing, prodding his filet with his fork.  
“So are you sleeping with him?”  
“No.”  
“Oh, I see. I see. Why not?”  
“Can we not talk about this?”  
Now Victor says nothing, narrowing his eyes at him over the table. Sherlock brings a baby carrot to his mouth and chews thoughtfully. 

///

_They experiment so gleefully it consumes Sherlock’s entire life. After the XTC there’s speed, and GHB, and a short-lived incident with mushrooms that neither of them care to repeat._

_And then, finally, there’s the cocaine. An expensive drug, appealing perhaps to Victor’s vanity as much as his drive for stimulation. He takes pride in all but showering them in it. This is a good thing, because Sherlock soon finds the buzz only lasts for a little while and then he needs more, another snort, another shot, to keep it going. He has never felt better than he does on cocaine, his entire world shifted into focus, everything making sense. It no longer matters whether Sebastian bloody Wilkes and his bastard friends think the two of them are trash, because they are infinitely_ better _than them._

_Victor only ever snorts it. Sherlock is the one who begins injecting, and then finds he no longer wants to stop. It’s when Mycroft walks in on them and Sherlock is so high he doesn’t even notice that he realises he’s in trouble. They’re in Sherlock’s bedroom, Sherlock riding Victor with single-minded determination, and he never hears his door open and close again._

_Mycroft confronts him maybe two hours later, when Victor has gone home smiling and wearing Sherlock’s shirt. He pulls him into father’s old study. Their mother had kept that room the way it was, preserved in some odd post-mortem status for nearly fifteen years, and Sherlock hates it. Mycroft knows he hates it, probably chose the room just for that purpose, and he opens his mouth to lecture Sherlock but snaps it shut abruptly when he gets a good look at him._

_“You’re high,” he says, and he’s actually_ surprised _. Sherlock laughs. “What did you take?” Sherlock doesn’t answer, and Mycroft makes a grab for his arm. Sherlock evades him.  
“Leave it. I am not your responsibility,” he hisses.  
“You damn well are. What did you take?” Mycroft never swears if he can help it. Actually upset, then, which tickles Sherlock.  
“None of your business.”  
“I saw you and Victor. I knocked up to four times, you didn’t even hear me.”_

_Sherlock stares at him for a moment and then just laughs again, imagining the face Mycroft must’ve made as he walked in on his precious baby brother, a stiff prick stuffed deeply up his arse. He regrets having missed that, actually.  
“Did he put you up to this? What are you two taking?”  
“Oh come off it. It’s not like he’s putting the needle to my arm, I can do that very well on my own.”  
Mycroft winces and stares and Sherlock rolls his eyes and makes to leave.  
“I can’t let this happen, Sherlock. I will not let you throw yourself away like that. That boy is no good for you.”_

_At that Sherlock whirls around, points an offended finger at Mycroft. “Wrong,” he spits. “That boy ought to be brilliant for me. I am the one who is no good for him.” His own words hit him only after he’s said them, and on his extended arm a track mark stands bright red on the pale inside of his elbow. It’s beautiful, really, the way red marks on pale skin always are, but then the only thing he can think of all of a sudden is an intelligent boy with blond hair and suddenly he gets why Victor cried all those months ago._

_Mycroft stands deflated in front of father’s desk. Sherlock pulls his arm back slowly, as if it were foreign to his body, and quietly walks out into the hallway._

///

Sherlock excuses himself between the main course and dessert and heads to the restroom. He’s washing his hands when Victor comes in. He smirks and hooks an arm around Sherlock’s waist, drags him into a stall and has him pressed up against the wall, his tongue in Sherlock’s mouth and an eager hand palming his growing erection through his slacks, before Sherlock even has time to come up with a biting remark to throw his way concerning this oddly predictable turn. 

So he just lets it roll over him, Victor’s desperation and eagerness, and wraps his arms around spindly shoulders. They are roughly the same height ( _wrong_ ) and Victor presses close and Sherlock tries not to think. 

Victor crouches in front of him and has him out his trousers and in his mouth in one fluid movement. His mouth is hot and familiar and Sherlock puts his hand in blond curly hair ( _wrong_ ) and groans. Victor grabs both his buttocks and presses, encouraging him, and Sherlock takes a step forward and crowds Victor against the other wall. He starts fucking his mouth with slow, shallow thrusts and Victor makes an appreciative sound that travels up the length of Sherlock’s cock and sends gooseflesh down his thighs. He braces himself against the wall, closes his eyes and ejaculates violently down Victor’s throat. 

Victor lets him slip from his mouth and grins up at him. “Been a while, huh?”  
Sherlock can’t vocalise for the moment so he just shrugs as he buttons himself back up. They emerge from the restroom together and Victor grins his teeth bare at their painfully awkward waiter as they sit back down. He takes a sip of wine and swishes it around in his mouth, eyes twinkling.  
“You only did that to discomfort them,” Sherlock concludes, tracing his finger around the foot of his glass again.  
“Of course. Sex in toilets is only fun if people know you did it.”  
And that, Sherlock supposes, is the essence of Victor. He grins and raises his glass to him.

///

_Even Victor gets on his case eventually. His mother already refuses to talk to him, Mycroft’s threats are getting more desperate and ridiculous each time, and on top of that he’s being threatened with expulsion, but he just plain doesn’t care. Ever since he was merely five years old and his mother shoved him into a psychiatrist’s office and decided she had done her best Sherlock has felt like he was working against incredible odds. At least the cocaine makes him feel comfortable in his own skin, for as long as it lasts._

_But Victor, the hypocrite._

_“You’re using too much.”  
“Okay, mum.”  
“I’m serious. You haven’t been to class in two weeks.”  
“You go to class for the both of us.”  
“Sherlock.”_

_Sherlock spins on his feet, dark circles under his bright eyes. He’s lost a lot of weight, and didn’t have too much to spare to begin with, but tries to puff himself up regardless. “Get off my case, Victor. Just stop. You’re the last person who ought to be telling me this.”  
“I haven’t used in almost a month,” Victor says quietly.  
Sherlock stares at him. “You lying bastard.”  
“I haven’t. You didn’t even notice. You always notice everything about everybody, and didn’t even realise you’ve been using alone for weeks. Sherlock. I’m serious.”_

_Sherlock snorts out a derisive laugh, shaking his head. “You’re serious. Oh, how fantastic. Well, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten me hooked then, have you ever thought of that?”  
Victor winces as if Sherlock has slapped him across the face. “I didn’t think –“he begins, but Sherlock interrupts him.  
“It’s your fault I’m like this. You did this to me. Why do you think my brother hates you?” He knows it’s true and he knows it isn’t true but having the option to blame someone else for his own faults is a deliciously new experience. _

_“I’m sorry. I know, I do, and I’m so sorry. If I’d known this was where it would lead you, I would have never… Jesus, Sherlock, please.”  
“Too late,” Sherlock spits, and he can practically taste the venom dripping down his teeth. “I’m a junkie. Congratulations. Well done.”_

_Victor goes pale and for a moment Sherlock thinks he might faint, crumple into a swoon like some over-dramatic Victorian heroine. “I love you,” Victor chokes out. Sherlock knows, of course Sherlock knows, but Victor has never outright said it and Sherlock wishes he hadn’t.  
“Fuck,” is all he can respond to it, and Victor crumbles and breaks and Sherlock can’t even bring himself to care. _ Wrong _, a part of his brain screeches at him, the part of his brain that remembers his childhood psychiatrist’s words, his mother’s screams, Mycroft’s carefully measured preaching, but he just_ can’t _. Victor breathes heavily, in, out, standing tall and skinny and broken._

_“I’m a fool,” he then says, closes his eyes and heads out the door._

_Just as well, really. Sherlock sits down on the carpet and rubs at the scar on his ankle._

///

Sherlock orders the most expensive dessert on the menu. It’s an elaborate sort of contraption involving raspberries and dark chocolate and mousse made with champagne, sitting in a neat, pink circle on yet another ridiculously oversized plate. Victor sits back, nursing his wine, and watches him eat. When Sherlock pushes the plate, still half-full, away from himself, Victor puts his glass down and laughs.

“You’re such a prick.”  
“Your own fault for taking me to this overpriced cesspool.”  
“Fine. Next time we’ll go for fish and chips in the park.” Victor grins and reaches for Sherlock’s spoon. He licks it clean, slowly, deliberately, and it’s such a cliché Sherlock thinks he might vomit. “Come back to the hotel with me.”  
“Would that really be a good idea?”  
“Yes, I think that would be a grand idea, actually.”

Sherlock sighs and Victor flags over the waiter. He pays and again tips an insane amount. The waiter thanks him twice and scurries off as Victor stands up, tall, elegant, and extends his hand to Sherlock.

“Come with me.”  
Sherlock catches his eye, looking at him as he leans back in his chair. It really isn’t a good idea at all. He shouldn’t. There’s no happy endings here, nothing to be gained, and the night is far too long for the both of them still.

He takes Victor’s hand.

///

_“I was offered a job.”_

_Victor stands in his doorway, trying to catch Sherlock’s eye but Sherlock won’t let him. He’s sitting on his bed, only just awake, fighting a vicious bout of nausea. “You’re twenty-one,” he says.  
“I know. Software development company in India. Apparently they’re looking for up-and-comers. Guess what I qualify as.”  
Sherlock scoffs at this, sitting back against the wall. An up-and-comer. Of course. A well-off young man, handsome, intelligent. He wonders if Victor realises how much he has outgrown Sherlock, but doubts he sees it that way. _

_Sherlock is terrified of what the world has in store for him. Victor can’t wait to embrace it._

_“It’s good money,” Victor tries.  
“Don’t use that as an excuse, you don’t need money.”  
“It’s a good opportunity.”  
“It’s about as far away from me you can get without actually heading for the moon.”  
Victor says nothing, staring at his shoes, and Sherlock knows it’s true._

_“You never loved me back. Not even a little. I know that,” Victor says softly, and Sherlock sighs. “This is killing me, Sherlock. It’s killing us both.” His voice is so soft now Sherlock can barely hear him.  
“Then leave. Go. Get away. I don’t need you,” Sherlock answers, turning away from him._

_Victor stands quietly in his door for a long, stretching moment, then leaves without another word. Sherlock reaches under his bed for his needle kit._

///

They make out in the cab again and they make out in the lift and they make out somewhere halfway down the corridor, pressed up against a door that isn’t Victor’s. It’s not even about lust as much, not really, merely about Victor being so aware of how little time he has and just trying to get the most out of it he can. Victor has taken a half-empty bottle of wine with them from the restaurant and abandons it on his bedside table, falling to his knees in front of Sherlock and nuzzling his dick through his trousers. Sherlock watches and Victor grins up at him, mouthing him through the fabric before climbing backwards onto the bed and pulling Sherlock on top of him.

Victor has both of them naked quickly and he’s still all hands, just as he used to be. Sherlock laughs at this and Victor is encouraged, wrapping long fingers around Sherlock’s cock and biting down on his collarbone. Sherlock presses his fingernails into the swell of Victor’s buttocks and Victor hugs him close, face pressed into his neck as he lets go of Sherlock’s prick and lets his hand wander down between his legs.

A dry finger presses into Sherlock’s arse and a high-pitched sort of whine escapes the back of his throat. It leaves a sort of static between his ears, a persistent, obnoxious hum. He digs his teeth into Victor’s shoulder and is rewarded with a somewhat slick hump against his hip and the finger wriggling in deeper. It’s been so long, and he’s still not sure whether he wants it. Victor slithers down his body, licking at his sensitive stomach and biting down on the inside of his thigh with an eagerness Sherlock knows from experience will leave him with a crescent bruise for days. Then Victor pushes his knees apart and settles himself between them and Sherlock goes completely blank. 

“Stop,” he says suddenly, sitting up, surprising himself more than he’s even surprising Victor, pressing a hand into the centre of Victor’s chest. “Stop. Don’t.”  
Victor backs off, staring at him. His face has gone very pale.  
“No,” is all Sherlock says, rubbing his hands across his face. “I don’t… I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”  
“Fuck,” Victor mutters and he gets up off the bed. He peels a packet of cigarettes out of his trouser pocket, holds them out to Sherlock. Sherlock shakes his head. Victor stands and smokes in silence, still half-hard, staring at the wall, and Sherlock sighs deeply.

“This is a bad idea,” he says.  
Victor shrugs, extinguishes the cigarette in an unused wine glass.  
“Come here,” Sherlock offers, and Victor swears again but comes anyway, moving back onto the bed and wrapping himself around Sherlock’s waist. They lie together like that, naked, like some tragic work of very detached art, two attractive men who for all intents and purposes ought to be fucking each other’s brains out.

“Why are you here, Sherlock?” Victor asks quietly.  
“I don’t know,” Sherlock says.  
“Don’t. You know. You always know. We’re not fucking eighteen years old any more. Why are you here?”

Sherlock is quiet for a long time. Victor breathes against his skin, one hand on Sherlock’s hip, the other splayed across his stomach. “Sometimes I miss you,” he says then, staring up at the ceiling. “Mostly I don’t. But sometimes, yes. A part of me wants… this. Wants to be wanted as badly as you want me.”  
“But not by me,” Victor finishes for him.  
“No, not by you.”

He feels Victor swallow, the tense motion of his throat against his ribcage. Words present themselves in Sherlock’s mouth and he works them around his tongue, feeling fleetingly like he might choke on them if he doesn’t just spit them out.

“John,” he says, and it sounds like something sacred, reverent. “I don’t… Sometimes I feel like I’m drifting in a small boat on a vast ocean, constantly beleaguered by storms and sharks and maelstroms and dangerous things that want to swallow me whole. I can’t make _sense_ if of it, a lot of the time. And then John came, and he is like this small island right in the midst of all of it, calm and steady. He’s a place where I can breathe.”

“I was never that person for you,” Victor concludes neatly, unnecessarily.  
“You were maelstrom all of your own,” Sherlock admits.  
“Nice metaphor.”  
“Thank you.”

Victor chuckles and lets go of him, sitting up straight and running a hand through his hair. With a sigh he looks down at Sherlock, offering him a crooked smile. “Blowjob, then?”

Sherlock laughs at that, closing his eyes. Victor laughs too, leaning into him and pressing his face into Sherlock’s shoulder. His hair tickles Sherlock’s neck and it’s familiar and nice.  
He gives him the blowjob. 

///

_It is nearly ten years since Victor left to India when Sherlock receives an e-mail. This is a year before John Watson, two years since the science of deduction, and the message is short._

_‘Hello Sherlock. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Found your website on Google, very nice. Good to see you are doing well. X Victor’_

_It takes him three weeks to reply, the message glaring at him from his inbox. Mycroft mentions it in week two, and Sherlock goes off at him for hacking his mail. Eventually he responds._

_‘Hello Victor. Yes, I am doing well. Why are you e-mailing me? SH’_

_Victor turns out to find that question endlessly funny, and the e-mails never stop. It’s not what Sherlock would call a regular thing – they mail maybe three, four times a year, brief updates, and bit by bit even from across the globe Sherlock learns that Victor Trevor has grown up. He’s been promoted three times since. He hasn’t used any drugs at all in nearly eight years, which is a lot longer than Sherlock can boast._

_He’s still in love with him. He doesn’t use that many words to tell him but Sherlock can read it between the lines. He still_ wants _him. He flirts mercilessly and Sherlock can’t help himself and bends to it, Victor’s playful innuendos caressing his oh so insatiable ego and igniting pleasant sweaty memories from when he was much younger and much less concerned with_ transport _._

_And then Victor is coming to London. The company he works for is expanding its office in Sydney and Victor has been offered to run it. He’ll be in London for a week, to arrange some things, and then he’ll disappear off to Sydney for what Sherlock supposes will be the rest of his life._

_He asks him to dinner and initially Sherlock does actually say no. The mail comes as he’s slumped on his chair across from John, who is reading his morning paper, and he answers instantly. Victor’s reply comes just as quickly - ‘think it over today and answer me again’. Sherlock looks at John, engrossed in some insignificant article about something that happened in Aruba, and holds his breath for almost a full minute._

_In the evening he mails Victor again._

_‘Fine. Thursday, eight o’clock. Yours, SH’_

///

Afterwards he rinses the taste of Victor out his mouth with a swig of wine, right out the bottle, and gets dressed. Victor wraps himself in a hotel bathrobe and watches him from the foot of the bed.

“Your blogger has no idea how lucky he is.”  
“Hmm.”  
“You ought to tell him.”  
“Don’t.”

So Victor doesn’t, just stands up and stretches his arms and sighs deeply. Sherlock buttons his shirt neatly, eyeing himself in a tall, ornate mirror on the wall. Victor moves next to him, wraps one arm around his waist and presses a kiss to the back of his neck.

“You need to find someone else to love, Victor. It was never going to be me,” Sherlock says, looking at them both in the mirror. They make a good-looking pair, he knows. Ridiculously so, even, and it makes him feel a little silly.  
Victor smiles at him in the mirror, the small, sad smile of a man who has long since accepted his defeat. “That’s where you’re wrong, Sherlock. It’s always going to be you.” He tightens his hold on him. Sherlock turns, embraces him, brushes their noses together. Victor is warm and present and how easy would it be, to accept this, but Sherlock knows he can’t. It’s not what he _wants_ and it’s not what Victor wants, either. Not really. Victor is far too vain to ever be truly happy coming second.

“Good luck in Sydney.”  
“Thank you. I’ll keep reading his blog, you know.”  
“I know. Stay in touch?”  
“You don’t really want me to do that. I still will, though.” And he smiles and he’s Victor again, white teeth and bright eyes, and Sherlock thinks he can live with that. He kisses him on the cheek, Victor’s eyelashes fluttering against the tip of his nose. Victor looks like he wants to say something, so Sherlock leaves before he has the chance.

London isn’t even quiet at two am and Sherlock walks home. The air is crisp, sharp, traffic buzzing in the background, a plane drifting across overhead. Two cats fight in an alley and Sherlock stops and watches them for a moment. He imagines India, and he imagines Sydney, and the idea of living anywhere that’s not this place, not his London, repulses him instantly. Victor loves London too, he always has, and he suddenly realises Victor loves it because he does and that that alone might be the reason he’s removed himself so far away from it. 

In a very bitter, regretful instant he understands how much he’s impacted Victor’s life, in return for how much Victor has impacted his, and knows that the scars that count are much more than just skin-deep. 

221B is still, unlike the city whispering around it. John left a light on for him in the kitchen, a small one over the sink. Apparently he hadn’t quite believed Sherlock would stay out the entire night after all and Sherlock stands and stares at the light, coat still on, for a good five minutes. He ponders the possibility of going up the stairs, hanging up his coat, his scarf, stepping out of his shoes and crawling into John’s bed. He doesn’t know if John would let him. He thinks he might, actually, would just allow him to fall asleep there just this one time and probably wouldn’t even ask why.

Sherlock doesn’t want just one time so he hangs up his coat, his scarf, steps out of his shoes and walks into the living room. He finds his violin in the dark. 

He draws out some random notes, slowly, softly, and the strings under his fingertips and smooth wood under his jaw are soothing and familiar. He stands by the window and plays without thinking for a while.

He only realises John has woken up when he turns to find him in his chair. His hair is tousled and he’s in his sleepwear, boxers and a grey t-shirt, his feet bare and solid on the wooden floor. His eyes look soft, sleep-foggy in the dark living room, and he’s observing Sherlock with eerie patience.

Sherlock lowers his violin and thinks of something to say.

“How was your date?” John asks then, cutting him to the chase.  
“Fine,” Sherlock says, holding his violin against his chest.  
“Good. That’s good.”

John’s not stupid. John knows very well that coming home at two am does not a good date make. You either part amicably right after dinner or come home the next morning in a pleasant post-sex daze, but arriving back at your apartment in the dead of night to play sad songs in the dark doesn’t exactly imply this went very well at all. To his credit John doesn’t ask, doesn’t press, just knows and accepts and Sherlock loves him so much he feels truly stupid about it.

“Are you going to see him again?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer for a long while, plucking at the strings on his violin, weighing every possible answer carefully.

“No,” he says then, and the finality of this answer feels like relief, like letting go.  
“All right,” John says. 

He tucks his violin back under his chin and draws the bow over the strings. Tchaikovsky, symphony #5 in E minor, andante. John hadn’t recognised the melody when Sherlock first played it for him months ago and had Googled himself silly afterwards trying to find what it had been. Sherlock had found proof for this in his search history, as well as an MP3 download stored in his music folder. He’d never mentioned that to John, merely opted for playing it for him more often. It makes this smile appear on John’s face, just a little one, more in his eyes than around his mouth and it’s so insanely private Sherlock would sometimes go a bit dizzy with it.

He doesn’t go dizzy this time. He feels grounded rather, like he’s slotted into place, playing in the dark for John. London slows down and disappears outside their window as John sits quietly and listens, focused on him and only on him, and it’s enough.


End file.
